Google takes Chile data center plans back to square one on environmental concerns

SANTIAGO (Reuters) – Google will rework from scratch its plans to build a $200 million data center in Santiago after concerns were raised about its environmental impact on the Chilean capital, the U.S. tech giant said in a statement on Tuesday.

In February, a local environmental court partially reversed a 2020 permit allowing the firm to build the data center, asking Alphabet (NASDAQ:)’s Google to revise its application to take into account the effects of climate change.

Google received initial authorization for the data center in early 2020, but the project has since drawn an outcry from residents and local officials over the possible impact on the capital’s parched aquifer.

Chile has been suffering from a drought for over a decade, and data servers require millions of liters of water annually for cooling.

The company informed Chile’s environmental regulator “it will not continue with the process of requesting permits for the project to install a data center in the Cerrillos neighborhood, as originally submitted and approved in 2020,” it said.

“In due course, a new process will begin from scratch for a project that will use air-cooled technology at this very location,” Google added.